Solomon our driver died, RIP

Solomon one of the college drivers died today, that brings the death toll of our colleagues for this year (since September) up to two. He had been sick on and off for some time, but nobody knows with what.

We developed an English workbook for the kindergarten and a big Alphabet book to accompany it, drawing the pictures for this book has been the bane of my life this week and I still have four or five more to do!

We now have the internet in our office which has made our office very popular with members of our colleagues' families. One of our colleague's sons has just graduated with a degree in Applied Maths and Computer Science, however he couldn't figure out how to switch the computer on or how to turn on the printer and without realising that he had disconnected the switch for the server, it makes you wonder did he actually ever get within ten feet of a computer during his degree.

This week on Wednesday we have three other volunteers coming to visit; Nigel who is doing research into valuing teachers, Liza who is trying to database Non-Formal Education and Julian who is an IT volunteer in Debra Birhan so it will be full house and they will stay till Saturday. Then as well as them Emma another volunteer from Asossa who is a democratization advisor is coming with her friend and her mother on
Thursday so there will be loads of us around. I wish visitors could spread themselves out so we would have something to look forward to each week rather than all coming together but Murphy's Law!

At the moment we are trying to figure out when Ied will be. Ied is the end of Ramadan and is a Muslim festival and a public holiday here. The Muslims only know it is Ied when the full moon appears in Mecca or something like that. So it could be Monday or it could be Tuesday we have to wait for the sound of singing from the mosque which will be hard to differentiate from the regular singing which comes every evening from the churches and mosques. We have workshops this week in the college so we don't want to think it is Ied and not turn up and leave all the participants sitting there waiting.

Today we had Steve, Addis and Addis' sister for lunch. We cooked a feast of roasted vegetables, Moroccan beef, garlic bread, crème caramel, and chocolate cake. It all went well even though our oven threatened to blow up in the middle of it all, but we caught it just as the plug started to melt. It is a far cry from when we use to have to just cook on the kerosene stove and the very damaged electric ring!

I bought a new pillow yesterday a foreign pillow as I am sick of my Ethiopian foam one which no matter what I do ends up like a big ridge and my head is about 20 cm off the bed when I sleep. I bargained the new pillow down to 50 birr (€ 4.50); Jill had seen them in Addis for 130 birr so I really thought I got a bargain. It is like a pillow at home, when I told Addis she had to see it and bring her sister to see it, as she
couldn't imagine a pillow costing so much.

Addis has a new mobile now and although she is still fighting with telecommunications for a sim card. One of the lecturers in college has given here a long-term loan of a sim card he had so for the moment she is happy.

So that is all the news from here, I hope you all have a good week.

Ciao Orla

Hey, We have Two New Cars

On Monday the ten day meeting which all the college teachers had been attending finally came to an end and we all had a big dinner in one of the restaurants in town to celebrate the start of the new college term, as usually we had to sit at the top table and not at the table in the corner with all the other women!

The college now has two new cars, these cars can fit twelve people each, that are like huge land rovers with benches in the back. So we and a lot of other people got a lift home in one of these. This means that the college now has five cars and will shortly have a bus, but only three drivers and one of them is sick so really only two drivers so hopefully soon they will employ some more drivers to go with the new fleet. Having more vehicles should also mean that we can work in rural areas more, which is the plan for this year.

The week after next one of the other volunteers; Nigel is coming to visit. He is carrying out a research project for VSO. VSO have a global campaign to have teachers valued more and the research is part of it. We had a very good example of how teaching is the career to go into if there is nothing else this week. Our old Amharic teacher called to the house to tell us his son had pretty much failed his leaving cert so the only hope now was that he would get into the teacher training college, which he successfully did. The son doesn't want to be a teacher at all in fact wasn't even bothered to register himself so his father went and registered for him. When you think of all the 6th year students in Ireland studying all day and night to get enough points to get into a teacher training college!

Today we went to Addis' (a young colleague's) house for lunch she had been preparing it since yesterday. She made Doro wot which is a very complicated and delicious chicken stew which you have for special occasions. Her sister has come to live with her and to study in Dessie. Addis lives in one room about the size of a small car and now will share this with her sister, it must be odd as they have never lived together before as one of them lived at home and the other lived with her granny.

Then we went into to town to see if Addis had been successful in getting a sim card, in Ethiopia the only mobile phone service is run by the government. Each town has a different number and it costs more to ring outside the town that your number is from. So I have an Addis Ababa sim card and I can call anyone else with an Addis Ababa sim card for 20 cent a minute but it is 50 cent a minute if I call someone with a sim card from another town. There is no text messaging allowed for the last year as people were texting to organise political demonstrations so the government banned text messaging and there is no voice mail so all the mobile can do is make calls and even that is with difficulty as the network is nearly always busy.
So Addis registered for a mobile sim card in Dessie about three months ago and today was the big day where they were going to put up the names of the lucky people allowed to buy a sim card today. So outside Telecommunications on a board they had stuck up 500 names in no order and you had to try and find your name and then you could go in and buy a sim card if your name was there. Unfortunately for Addis her name wasn't there and as today was for buying only she would have to return on Monday to find out why. She spent the rest of the day complaining about the man who she had registered with the funniest threat she made towards him was that when she had her own car, if she sees him and even if he looks really tired she won't give him a lift! So he better watch out!
The rainy season seems to be coming to an end (I hope I am not speaking too soon) it is only raining a little bit on the odd night here and there. I swapped my DVD collection with Susan (another Irish volunteer) so I am working my way through her DVD collection now. I have watched three series of Sex in the City and feel like I have had a vacation in New York and feel pretty lucky to be living a simple life in Africa instead!

Francis moved from Dessie to Gambella a few months ago and left a rug and picture for me, which I received from his friend this week. The rug takes up about half my sitting room and the picture is very large too and they look really nice in the sitting room and make the place much more cosy and home like, this combined with fridge, water heater, oven and electric heaters makes my life much improved on what it was last year.

It is hard to get used to the routine of life here again after travelling and being in Addis for so long. Here I get up about 7am have a shower and breakfast go to work come home for lunch go back to work, then come home from work around 5:30pm or so. Then I have a cup of tea and read a book, after a while make some dinner and then watch a DVD and go to bed about 9:30pm. So it is a very quiet life. I am trying to savour the calmness and quietness of life here as I suspect I will never experience it again, even if it does have some very boring moments particularly in the evenings.

Time flies by though and sometimes I am scared by how little time I have left. I know from last year that from about Easter onwards it is very difficult to get work done so the next 6 months are really it for getting projects completed and ensuring that the cluster work will be sustainable after we go. I think it will be, as long as our colleagues stay but Aragesh told me the other day that when she gets her degree she would like to work for an NGO, and I can't blame her, the pay would be better and the status and she would be very capable, so we need to make a long term plan so the work will continue. All schools have been ordered to model themselves on Dessie and Kombolcha now, which is all very good but the schools in Dessie took a lot of work for many years to reach where they are so I am not sure the ministry are prepared to support all schools in reaching the standards here, but then at least it has been shown to be possible to reach the standard here and at least the government won't have the excuse that it can't be done.

Well I think that is all the news for this week, I will post again soon.

Ciao,

Orla

Back in Dessie again

Hi
Well I am back in Dessie now ready to start the new academic year but there are not many other people ready to start with me! All the staff are at a ten day meeting about continuous professional development. Four of our supervisors were selected to give this lecture region wide in all the colleges of education – this is a big thing for our supervisors who use to be regular primary school teachers and they are now giving training to the college lecturers!

My shower has now been fitted with a water heater so I now have hot water in my part of the house at last; it is a great luxury to be able to have a shower whenever I want.

I was in Addis for the last few weeks helping with the orientation of the new volunteers. They all seem very nice for the first few days they asked me endless questions about everything in Ethiopia which was very tiring but after that they all settled down and turned out to be a really great bunch.

Gillian my house mate had a bus accident a few weeks ago and broke her collar bone so as a result we got a lift back to Dessie in the VSO car which was very nice instead of the bus. I also had a terribly long bus journey up to Addis it took 12 hours as opposed to the regular 8 hours and during the journey we got a puncture and the radiator over heated and to top it all off if the bus was in third gear it stopped moving so we had to drive in second gear apart from down hills where he could quickly shift into fourth gear, but at least I got there in one piece. Gillian is fine now thank God.

We are now planning how to spend the funds raised. Last year we got a donation of 11,000 books from the British council, they were all the same book – The Magic Stick and we found because schools got about 70 of the same book they were actually willing to put them in the classrooms and let the children read them as opposed to when they get one or two copies of a book and they just put it away in the library never to be touched again! So we are now planning to produce a book for all the schools here so we are hoping in the next few weeks to run a story competition with the schools to select stories to go in the book. So thank you to people who raised money this is one of a few projects we hope to be able to complete with these funds.

The Dean of our college has been appointed the Vice President of the new University which is to open next October in Dessie (it isn’t yet built!) so we will be getting a new boss, hopefully one of the Vice Deans will be promoted.

So hopefully I will be able to write more regularly now that I am back in Dessie.
Take care
Ciao
Orla